Nikolai is a young wizard with high aspirations. He wishes to achieve immortality and become a grandmaster of dark magic. But he’s currently apprenticed to a mage who hasn’t been quite satisfactory and he is stuck in a town where dark magic is banned. He’s desperate to learn from Medea, an immortal mage with a reputation of killing all her apprentices and he goes to great lengths to manipulate her into accepting him. He gets what he wants but he’s still not happy and spends all his time working out ways to avoid doing the work she asks of him. He also becomes chronically unwell and thinks it’s all the…